Mad Men’s brilliant writer/creator/EP Matthew Weiner is not fucking about at all in what has been a banner 5th season for Mad Men, as Sunday’s season finale approaches. Weiner was able to basically wrap up the Lane Price check fraud plot line in a scant few episodes, which we must applaud, as Weiner apparently has no taste for meandering plot riddles never solved, one of the only black marks on his former show, the epic Sopranos. And we applaud this bit of denouement, juxtaposed with perhaps the plot line we most enjoy, that of Sally (isn’t young Kiernan Shipka excellent in this role?) and Betty, and of course Glen, played by Weiner’s son Marten, who has been a show stealer throughout the years on what has to be the best show on television right now.

After Bert Cooper brings the cancelled check to Don’s attention, which he knows is forged, we felt Don had no choice but to fire Lane. That was completely justifiable. Yet Don has not been privy to Lane’s financial woes, which have been a recurring theme. When Lane returns to his office and surveys the falling snow, we were immediately stirred by the thought of Lane’s impending suicide in that very way foreshadowed each week by the opening credits. By taking the plunge.

When Lane’s new Jaguar failed to cooperate with his carbon monoxide poisoning method, we were convinced that Lane was to be the mad man from the credits. How cruelly ironic for Lane that the car he was so proud of, but that the others had been grossly slamming and slandering, was indeed a lemon, as Bert Cooper had suggested at the first mention of the car.

But Lane in the end preferred to swing from the gallows. When Don got back from his meeting with Dow and they informed him, he looked like he had seen a ghost. When told he was still hanging, Don insisted they cut him down. He’s a doer, that Don Draper. It had to register with him, as it does with faithful viewers, that this is the 2nd suicide to happen on Don’s watch. Recall that Don had spurned his brother and tried to buy himself out of a future relationship with him by using a bag full of cash. Mission kind of accomplished.

Don had told his long lost brother that he only lived his life in one direction: forward. Yet, the drawer full of mementos he kept in his desk in Ossining, when discovered by Betty, finally prompted a long coming divorce. Speaking of Ossining, how about old neighbor Glen’s biggest role on the show since Betty unwisely granted him a lock of her hair?

Sally and Betty, again at each other’s throats early on, and a jealous Betty, obvious in her disdain for Megan, tells Sally that she only likes her because Megan let’s her “do whatever she wants.” To which Sally replies, “she lets me eat whatever I want.” Then Betty calls Don and insists she pushes Sally off on him and his “child bride.”

Bad form indeed, but isn’t that the ugly Betty we’ve come to hate/love/hate? Sally’s convo with Megan (Jessica Pare) and her acting buddy leave her “longing” for Glen, whom she calls and invites to visit her at Don’s. At the front door and then in the museum they have their amusing kid conversations, as Glen tells her he’s seen better penthouses, that Teddy Roosevelt killed all the caribou, and then about how the seniors on the lacrosse team are bullying him.

Sally: “Henry got bullied when he was younger and now he runs the city.”

Fantastic, really. And almost as good was when she tells Glen she isn’t big on his mustache. But this would be a watershed episode for Sally for a more serious reason, as she gets her period for the 1st time, we feel foreshadowed by the waitress bringing her coffee when out with Megan. Sally runs out of the museum after the event and takes a cab back home to Betty, who, ever the ice queen, hardly knows how to comfort the girl at first, apprehensively patting her head with her cold, waxy hand.

Then Betty, after calling Megan to explain Sally’s disappearance, says that she “became a woman today” and “I think she just needed her mother.” A triumphant Betty returns to comfort Sally, actually a nice moment, and perhaps the nicest between the two that’s aired in the show’s full run (top).

Glen returns to Don’s for his bag and ends up being taken in by Megan. After the phone rings, Glen asks “was that Betty?”

Priceless considering the history there. Then Megan asks Glen if he would like something to eat.

Glen: “If you don’t mind.”

Who wasn’t having flashbacks to the Betty/Glen dynamic of the early Mad Men days? And the complexity of all the Betty/Glen and now Megan/Glen possible Oedipal issues to be considered.

When Don returns home from learning of Lane’s suicide, he and Glen have a poignant conversation on the elevator.

Glen: “Why does everything always turn to crap?”

Asked by Don to elaborate, he says that all hopes and dreams never seem to pan out. Don asks him what he wants to do.

Don: “If you could do anything at all, what would you do?”

Cut to the final scene in which Don is allowing Glen to drive the car back up to his boarding school. Apparently Don is now into preventive suicide measures, giving Glen something to smile about.

………

The other best show on TV and another AMC production, Breaking Bad, returns on Sunday, July 15th at 10 PM. We have learned that the final 16 episodes of the epic have been broken into two 8 episode mini-seasons. So far, the final 8 episodes, or the last 8 episodes of season 5 are slated to air in July, 2013. Between now and then, AMC will run Sunday late night BrBa marathons, starting with the pilot and episode 2 back to back, beginning at 3:12 AM Monday morning. A good time for gib heads, it would seem.

Mad Men star Jon Hamm is very fond of discussing what a bad guy his character Don Draper is. Don has pulled some numbers over the years, for sure. Some of our personal favorites? Well, let’s see. We really loved when Don was banging that old hag Bobbi Barrett, crashed the car while driving drunk, and had to call Peggy to come bail him out of jail. We guess that may be a mark of a bad guy–no one close to call when things go wrong–but we still don’t agree with Jon Hamm that Don is all that bad. Mad Men would have us believe that DWI was a birthright back then. If you’ve watched lately you may have noticed Campbell’s driving skills. If so, you’d probably rather take your chances with Don, bombed.

Now Pete Campbell is a bad guy as far as we’re concerned, but that’s another story. Certainly was gratifying watching Lane best him in a bout of the gentleman’s sport though. In fact, the entire season has been gratifying. Most notably, Roger’s LSD trip, the aforementioned fisticuffs, Roger’s blowjob from Megan’s moms (Julia Ormond), and the whole Don’s new life/Megan (Jessica Pare) dynamic. And who could neglect the return of Glen, an absolute favorite of ours?

When Sally called him (who is now being fed pills by Henry’s mother), after she witnessed Roger’s blowjob, he said “how’s the city?” Sally’s response framed the episode perfectly.

“Dirty.”

But Henry’s mother is far from the worst bitch on the block. That honor still belongs to Betty Francis, who, in limited scenes has taken on an expanded capacity. To state it plainly, she is enormous. But to us, she’s even meaner than she is fat.

While Betty’s actions are apparently somewhat predictable in Matthew Weiner’s version of the American tale, every man a cad, every woman a rag, at least every divorcee that is, they are no less startling or reprehensible. Sure, Don took Sally to see the eclipse that time and then started having sex with her teacher, but at least he takes an interest in his kids not named Gene, and refrains from partaking in another ancient birthright: child abuse.

Then there’s Betty. January Jones makes such a mean bitch in this role that now Queen Cersei (Lena Headey) from Game of Thrones looks like a human being to us, and there is still some question as to whether she is human at all. This week Betty overdosed on jealousy when in picking up the children, she pressed her way into Don’s penthouse and spied upon the life of the new Don Draper.

Then, when “helping” Sally with her family tree project, she casually mentioned to her that daddy had another previous wife, and suggested that Megan had lied to her about it. Whomever coined “time heals all wounds” apparently never met Betty Francis.

Thankfully, Sally, with a little help, figured out her Mother’s game. And when she had revealed to Betty her revenge plot was foiled, Betty became enraged. Dragging the kids into the fray? We jest about Weiner’s tale of Americana, but that doesn’t mean we necessarily doubt it.

With Mad Men being a show that tends to follow up on most major storylines, we are expecting, well, big things from Betty’s character the rest of the way, whether she has limited scenes or not. Matthew Weiner fought to keep Betty’s character alive when AMC tried to pinch their margins because he felt the jilted ex was a compelling plot line. We are sure AMC is happy now that he did. They probably didn’t even gripe too much about springing for her fat suit.

Try Googling “Fat Betty Francis”. And then run the image search. The fans are in love, if not with Betty, then with the fact that she is a beefed up version of the old bitch we knew and hated. Here’s one of our favorite pics:

For us though, it’s the ugly factor that we are bent on. Can you imagine what her reaction will be at the inevitability to come, when she finds out her daughter is fucking Glen?

Early this season on AMC’s smash hit Mad Men, Peggy Olsen (Elisabeth Moss), who pulls no punches, told Don (above) “we’re all here because of you.” Peggy, eager to please her mentor, but also put off by his excessive drinking and snappy temper, was quite emphatic. The new agency, SCDP, was populated by people for the most part hand picked by Don. After Don gave a poorly received interview to a trade publication, the new venture, along with people’s confidence in the magical Don Draper was imperiled. Don would right his gaffe by giving a lights out interview to the Wall Street Journal. Later in the season, he’d win a prestigious award in his field–a monument to the new agency. Don even began exercising restraint with the bottle. It was a good sign for DD fans who saw his life careening out of control. It took a drunken tussle with Duck Phillips of all people for him to recognize the need for a more sober Don. How embarrassing it was when a much younger Don said “uncle” with Duck on top of him. But Don had fought to protect Peggy’s honor, and their relationship, which fractured some time after Don had come to visit Peggy in the hospital after she gave birth to Campbell’s love child, mostly because Don had been extra hard on Peggy and because Peggy perceived that Don would always get the credit for her work, was back on track. Unfortunately for Don it took a death to someone important to him–the real Ms. Draper–for Peggy to see Don in a different light. The rift between creative’s 2 most creative, especially after Don had brought Peggy back to the agency from oblivion, and after Peggy had bailed Don out of a Long Island jail on a DUI rap, had us very disturbed. We were happy to see things set right, and learning that Cooper (Robert Morse) had lost his testicles in the Great War and that Sterling (John Slattery) had been sexually ravaged by that cougar Ms. Blankenship was the cherry on top.

In many regards, it’s been a watershed year for Don. Don started swimming, pardon the earlier pun, and we noticed that the dullness that had set in after his divorce was departing. Perhaps it wasn’t quite the year we were expecting from him though. I for one, assumed that Don, newly single and unleashed upon the city, would display that “legendary prowess” with the ladies, to steal a phrase from Nazi party, um, I mean Tea Party candidate Carl Paladino. But Don has been leading a mostly quiet existence. For Don. He’s still in the same little apartment on Waverly which is well below his means. He consented to a few dates with Bethany (Anna Camp) at the urging of Roger and Jane (Peyton List), had sex with his secretary Allison (Alexa Alemanni), which led to her throwing a paper weight at him and leaving in tears–a drunken tryst which gave Don more reason to cut back on the booze–and to scale back the office romances. Slightly. Don would still hook up with Dr. Miller (Cara Buono), banged a prostitute on the regular who he liked to beat him about the face during sex, quite the commentary on Don’s self esteem, but the dapper Draper seemed downright uncomfortable at the Kit Kat Club with Lane (Jared Harris), whose dalliance with a hooker on his impromptu New Year’s Eve with Don seemed to create a monster.

Don has also resolved some familial issues this season. Despite Betty’s new husband Henry’s (Christopher Francis) obvious disdain for him, Don presented himself at his son Gene’s birthday party, intent on not becoming the forgotten man in Gene’s life. Don’s new life may not be ideal, but he has progressed as a man, shown feelings, and learned from mistakes. None of that helped him any when Lee Garner Jr. (Darren Pettie) gave Roger the jarring news that Lucky Strike, the account that “kept the lights on”, had moved on. If that wasn’t bad enough, the aeronautics company that Campbell landed when Don left Pete stranded poolside in Hollywood to go off with a young hottie, was conducting background checks which left Don’s background exposed. Don ordered Pete, who knows Don’s secret, to drop the account. The firm went from profitable to the Titanic in one day, and Campbell, with a baby on the way, was furious at Don. With nobody in the business willing to give SCDP the time of the day due to the prevailing notion in the industry that they’d be out of business in 6 months, Lane arranged for a credit extension to keep the firm afloat. But the extension required an outlay of $100,000 from the senior partners and $50,000 each from Lane and Pete. With the company just about flatlining, Don did something. He wrote a letter to the New York Times criticizing the tobacco industry and the ad companies that stumped for it. The letter was met with outrage by the partners, especially from Bert Cooper, who made a most valid point: by not signing all their names to it, the letter submarined and undermined the other partners. Cooper was so incensed that he took his shoes and quit on the spot. Only Peggy saw the letter for what it was: a publicity stunt meant to gain SCDP much needed attention.

Where the episode left off on Sunday night, the letter had yet to produce tangible effects economically. But anti-tobacco organizations are dialing them up, and as Ken Cosgrove (Aaron Staton) pointed out, those organizations have infuential members who sit on the boards of major companies. Don is enthused that they will have an opportunity to work, and that their work will surely lead to more work. With regard to Campbell, Don did the right thing by putting up Campbell’s $50,000–a source of strife between Campbell and pregnant wife Trudy (Alison Brie).

The fact remains going into Sunday’s finale that the firm is in dire need of new accounts. Layoffs have begun, the industry buzz is that they are dead men walking, and they need more than a letter to The Times to turn the tide. Don must make it rain. After all, he is the brightest star in Mad Men’s midst, and what Peggy said about them all being there because of him can be applied to us, the audience, as well. If Don didn’t feel that burden, he’d never have felt obligated to pay Pete’s share, or to assure Peggy her job. Are we really going to have to sit through an anti-climactic finale in which the agency goes down in flames?

We think not. Season 3’s ending was one of the great season finale’s we’ve ever seen, and one of the strongest Mad Men episodes ever. Last year, Don, with his family life crumbling, rose above his personal circumstance, found a way to circumvent his contract, and formed the new agency in dramatic fashion. We look for something similarly spectacular from Don this week, and we trust that ace show creator, writer, and executive producer Mathew Weiner will give to us.

We would speculate, gun to our head, that Chelcie Ross will reprise his role as Conrad Hilton–a man who “comes and goes” as he pleases, someone Don has a history with, and who has the clout and financial might to take the agency off life support.

As for last week, Weiner is to be credited for having his son reprise the role of Glen, and for having United States of Tara star Rosemarie Dewitt reprise the role of Don’s former lover Midge.

Now for some news the gib heads aren’t going to love. The AMC top drama, Breaking Bad, starring Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul as meth makers in Albuquerque, New Mexico, will not return to the air in March, where it debuted and aired in its first 3 seasons, but instead will return in July of 2011, making the hardened legion of BrBa faithful very unhappy.

July 2011 seems a long way away, doesn’t it? It sounds almost… futuristic.Unfortunately, that futuristic date will be the premiere of Breaking Bad‘s fourth season, which has been pushed back four months from its original March start date, according to Deadline TV.

“”I think what AMC is thinking here is there will be less competition for us — particularly from the broadcast networks — if we launch our season during the summer than if we come back again like we did this time in March,” shared star Bryan Cranston, who plays the main character Walter White on AMC’s hit series.

If you’re worried about still having a year to get your Breaking Bad fix, don’t worry. AMC will be churning out mini-episodes for you over the break. The show goes back into production in January, when these short clips (less than five minutes) will be filmed.

Interstitials? Meaningful ones that advance the plot during our long, painful separation from that sick blue crystal? I hope Cranston, who also directs most episodes, is right, but we are skeptical, especially after watching and being less than impressed with Trueblood’s meaningless, random, and haphazard minisodes.

What about Breaking Bad coming back in July–when Mad Men has always debuted? Is AMC prepared to steal Sunday nights next summer with a blockbuster lineup that includes what many regard as television’s top two dramas? Could the more popular Mad Men be moved up to March, where it can probably better handle the competition that Breaking Bad is trying to avoid? Because of Mad Men’s production schedule, a move to March on short notice might not even be possible.

And will the slow moving Rubicon prove itself to be a worthy cornerstone of Sunday night programming by the time that either season 4 of Breaking Bad or season 5 of Mad Men begins? We’re pulling for Rubicon, but we haven’t seen anything so far to warrant the status of a show that will achieve even cult popularity.

At least Breaking Bad fans who watch Entourage have gotten a little Saul Goodman fix of late. The hilarious Bob Odenkirk has a recurring role on Entourage this season as Mark Cuban’s business associate.

AMC, the top dog in creating cable dramas, even ahead of the always busy new programming department at HBO, debuted its third original program this summer–Rubicon–starring James Badge Dale, who you may have caught in HBO’s Pacific. Their first two originals, Mad Men and Breaking Bad, are probably finest A and finest B, when it comes to acted dramas on television right now.

The bar is obviously set high on Dale, who will no doubt be compared to Jon Hamm and Bryan Cranston, and on a show that takes its name from the Greek pass that the Roman army took on the orders of Caesar in 49 B.C., and which has come to mean “a limit that when passed or exceeded permits of no return and typically results in irrevocable commitment.” Dale, playing Will Travers, an intelligence analyst at a high level think tank, is a widower who lost his wife and daughter in 9/11, and who mostly lives an isolated existence. Travers’ father-in-law and boss, David Hadas (Peter Gerety), is killed in a train crash, and Will is quickly offered his old job of team leader. While Will was conflicted about remaining in their employ, he takes the job so he can pursue the mystery of what really happened to his father-in-law, who sent him a number of clues as part of a code he wanted Will to break in relation to his murder, we presume, which started with him parking his car on the morning of the train crash in spot # 13–something the superstitious Hadas would never do unless he was trying to get someone’s attention.

Before the crash, Travers was depressed, and had confided to Hadas that he missed his family and that he hated his job. After the crash, Will is quickly offered the promotion, though the dirt wasn’t dry on Hadas’ casket, literally. Will is approached by Kale Ingram (Arliss Howard), who is the highest ranking employee to work “downstairs”, at Hadas’ funeral. Will says he’s going to reject the offer, but pleas from co-workers, and more importantly, clues from David, compel him to change his mind. A retired analyst, Ed Bancroft (Roger Robinson), who Will has just met but who may now be his only confidante, figures out that a piece of information that David left Will was a match book code–one where each person has the same book, and they look up a series of letter postions to put a message together–ingenius, because it can never be cracked without knowing what book was used. David had given Will a book right before his death, and Will looks up the letters which form the sentence, “they hide in plain sight.”

Obviously Hadas is referring to Will’s co-workers and superiors. Will’s assistant (Jessica Collins) happens to be secretly giving info to Kale Ingram about the different members of the team. Kale makes a point of asking if Will is overly preoccupied with David’s murder. Kale may very well know what happened to Hadas, and their boss, Truxton Spangler (Michael Christopher), it looks like, may be part of the group responsible for Hadas’ death. Will’s first meeting with Spangler was tense, at which, Spangler shows them a picture of George Beck, a German Muslim person of interest to the agency, and says of the two guys in the photo with him, “I’d like to know who they are.”

Will, who walked up to the roof and stood out on the ledge for a minute, before walking in and taking his new job, has eyes on him. His rooftop dalliances are being photographed (by Isiah Whitlock Jr., who played state senator Clay Davis on The Wire), and Will is being followed. David, who gave him his motorcycle before he died, left Will a revolver, and a strip of coded numbers inside the seat–numbers we would later learn correlated to the dates the Yankees won their 27 championships, something David knew Will would know.

David wasn’t the only person to die early on in Rubicon, as in the very first scene, we see billionaire magnate Tom Rhumor (Bill Murray buddy Harris Yulin), upon seeing a green four leaf clover on his morning paper, take out a gun and blow his brain’s out. The clover was significant to Will, who spotted a trend in the crossword puzzles of a few major papers, that there was a pattern of clues representing the 3 branches of government, and the fourth–the intelligence community–all represented by a four leaf clover. Will would piece together the signifcance, that the crosswords were a go code for revenge killings, after another analyst tells him that a similar pattern in 11 newspaper crosswords in 1983 came right after a terrorist attack, and that a few days later, a number of senior Hezbollah money men went missing.

Will thinks that David’s train crashed because of that go code, and it wouldn’t surprise me if this all connects to George Beck, and has terrorist implications. It wouldn’t surprise me–in fact–I predict that at some point we will learn that the agency where Will works knew the towers were going to fall. Will, to find the truth, must pass the rubicon, and probably has already. Dale plays an intellectual, not a brute, so it should be interesting to see how he handles himself with that gun, and with the weird shadowy types who are following him.

Will Travers may not be Don Draper or Walter White, and the vague intrigue of Rubicon may not yet compare with beauty of Mad Men or the grit of Breaking Bad, but Will is a character to root for on an intelligent show.